


Afraid to Fall

by Scrawlers



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 01:05:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17033408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scrawlers/pseuds/Scrawlers
Summary: After the Calamity is defeated, Zelda and Link have a life to live together—and a lot of work to do. But the question that must be asked now is not what they should do for Hyrule, but rather, how they should continue on as themselves.





	Afraid to Fall

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this about a year ago, but in light of Tumblr being . . . Tumblr, I've decided to archive everything here, just in case.

When she saw him— _properly_ saw him, as something more than a vision as she held the Calamity back—for the first time in one hundred years, Zelda felt the air dissipate from her lungs as a smile tugged at her lips. He was weary; blood and grime caked his skin and sweat glued his bangs to his forehead. Even with his hood drawn up, she could see tendrils of hair coming loose from his ponytail due to the exertion of riding and fighting. His clothes were ripped and torn in places, and as he walked toward her it was with an unsteady gait—not from any wounds that she could see, but due to the adrenaline that she noticed was still causing him to tremble. He sheathed his sword as he neared her, and despite his clear exhaustion, despite the way  _her_ muscles felt like jelly after one hundred years of restraining the Calamity and the exertion banishing Ganon at long last had required, she smiled.

“Do you . . . really remember me?” she asked.

Link stared at her, his lips parting a little, his eyes widening. It was enough, in that moment, to cause her heart to stall in her chest, to cause her own smile to tremble. But then  _he_ smiled, a flush pooling in his cheeks and light springing forth in his eyes, and before she had a chance to process how seeing  _him_ smile made her feel, he crossed the grass and threw his arms around her in a hug. He embraced her tightly; she felt something in her back pop as he crushed her against his chest, his face buried in her hair, and she smiled against the fabric of his ragged tunic as she felt him huff a laugh.

“Of course I remember you,” he said. His voice was hoarse, but oh-so-warm, and she hooked her arms under his to hug him back just as tightly. He was battle worn, and frankly, he smelled awful . . . but in that moment, she didn’t think she had ever experienced anything so wonderful.

Looking back, Zelda supposed that would have been the opportune time to tell him how she felt—to confess the feelings that, one hundred years ago, she had tried to get the Great Deku Tree to tell Link on her behalf. But as opportune as it may have been, she hadn’t thought of it. It wasn’t until several days later when Link took her to Hateno Village, his hands over her eyes as he led her to what he said was a surprise, that she remembered she had something she needed to tell him.

It wasn’t that moment, exactly. Though Link smelled much nicer after he had a bath and changed into fresh clothes—though his hands, despite being rough with callouses, were warm and gentle, and though there was a little note of laughter in his voice as he guided her across what sounded like a wooden bridge, away from the bustle of the village, she hadn’t quite remembered what it was she was supposed to tell him just then. It wasn’t until he brought his hands away from her eyes and said, “Ta-da!” — wasn’t until he showed her the little stable where their two horses would stay just beside the house, or the little room in the back that he said she could use as a study, or the beautiful lights above the kitchen table, or the singular bed that he said  _she_ alone could have until she, without thinking, said that she didn’t mind sharing—that she remembered.

Link, of course, had been flustered. After a stammered agreement about sharing the bed he had sputtered an excuse about needing to feed the horses and had fled down the stairs, taking them three at a time before Zelda had a chance to call him back. But that, she had supposed in the moment, was for the best. Ganon was vanquished. Link, though a bit more talkative now, was the same sweet person he had been one hundred years ago. Her feelings had not changed, and now that the burden was lifted, telling him should have been so very simple . . .

But as she stood there, her hands clasped in front of her stomach and her heart fluttering in her chest, she knew it was anything but.

Ganon was vanquished, at least for the time being, but that did not mean their duties were completed. The people of Hyrule were still scattered, still suffering. They were survivors. But there was a difference between surviving and thriving, and while Zelda was not eager to return to the castle and rule as a monarch from the throne, that did not mean she could not act as queen for her people. As her appointed knight—no, as the  _Hero_ of Hyrule, Link had just as much of a duty as she did to see to it that the people were cared for. So it was not long before they began traveling, visiting the different settlements across Hyrule, and meeting with the leaders of the people from which her Champions had once hailed. Link didn’t mind. On the contrary, he was the one who suggested they go by horseback rather than using the Sheikah Slate to warp, saying that it would be more enjoyable for her.

“You haven’t seen Hyrule in a hundred years, Princess,” he said. “There’s so much for you to see, and no better way to see it than on horseback.”

So they rode. While they were traveling on business, their journey was so much more than that. On horseback, the two of them raced across the plains, their laughter—joyous and light and  _free_ —filling the air like a song. Link taught her how to shoot while riding, and—when they were in the area—introduced her to his horseback archery instructor, a man named Jini, for additional instruction and practice.

But still, she did not tell him how she felt. She did not tell him when he helped her cross a river, skipping across the stones with her hand in his. She didn’t tell him when they came across an entire  _meadow_ of Silent Princess flowers, or when he plucked one and, after a moment of careful thought, tried tucking it in her hair. ( _Tried_ , because even after three attempts it kept falling, and he pouted as he said, “What the heck, the stories make it sound so easy.”) There were a thousand reasons why she said nothing, but none more important than the first and foremost:

He was her appointed knight. But he was  _Hyrule’s_  Hero, and she was, by all rights, Hyrule’s queen. Their duty came before anything else.

\- - -

One day, in a break from their usual tradition, Link used the Sheikah Slate to warp them to the tower on the Great Plains after breakfast. They sailed down (Zelda having constructed a paraglider much like his after studying his for enough time), and Link led her across the plains to a deserted and decrepit temple that Zelda recognized even before it was fully in view.

“The Temple of Time?” she asked, as Link led the way up the broken steps. Spider webs clung to the edges of the stone, which had greatly been faded by the wind, rain, and—Zelda supposed, however ironically—time itself. “Why?”

Link hummed a little as he entered the temple proper. He didn’t look back at her, at least not immediately. Instead, he looked up at the Hylia statue in the middle of the temple, gazing at it for a long moment before he said, “I don’t know. It’s just . . . this place has always felt special to me for some reason. It’s always called to me. Even back then, I think. From what I remember, anyway.”

“I see.” Zelda came to a stop behind him. Link had brought her there for a reason, or so he had said at breakfast, even if he wasn’t entirely sure what that reason was. She would give him a moment or two to figure it out.

A moment or two was all he needed. He spun back around to face her, and when he did, he smiled softly. It was different, somehow, from his usual smiles, and she felt a little thrill run through her.

“Do you know what day it is today, Princess?” he asked. Zelda shook her head, and he said, “It’s the anniversary of the day we defeated Calamity Ganon. One year to the day.”

“The day  _you_ defeated Calamity Ganon,” Zelda corrected him.

“Uh, who was the one who actually sealed him?” Link asked. “‘Cause I’m pretty sure that was you.”

“Yes,” Zelda agreed, “but only after you wore him down.”

“Right. So  _we_ defeated Calamity Ganon,” Link said, and there was a note of smugness in his voice that made Zelda snort a laugh against her will. He grinned. “Anyway, like I was saying, it’s our one year anniversary. And since it’s our one year anniversary, there’s something I want to say.”

“All right . . .” Zelda said slowly. “What is it?”

Link took a deep breath, his smile fading. The look he fixed her with was piercing, as if he was seeing not only her, but  _through_ her to some part of her that even she herself wasn’t aware of. She was taken aback by his sudden intensity, but before she had a chance to question it he said, “I don’t feel . . . like your appointed knight anymore.”

Zelda’s heart plummeted to her feet. She wouldn’t have been surprised to find pieces of it scattered around her boots. “What?”

Link looked away from her, up at the ceiling of the temple. “Things have . . . changed between us, I think, over the past year,” he said. “Or maybe they changed before that—maybe it was after I woke up in the Shrine of Resurrection, and started going around, doing all of that stuff to save you and Hyrule and everyone else. But I don’t feel like—I think that things have changed, that they were different from how they once were, even after our relationship improved.” He looked back at her. “Don’t you?”

Zelda opened her mouth to answer, but no sound escaped. Her feelings had not changed—she still wanted the same things she had back then, had swallowed her desires down as she had back then, for many (if not all) of the same reasons. She hadn’t known what his feelings were, but she had a feeling she was about to find out, and a strong part of her realized then that she did not want to hear it.

“Princess?”

“I . . .” She swallowed, cleared her throat. Difficult conversations were nothing new, even if she was out of practice. She could do this. “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand what you mean. Do you no longer wish to be my knight?”

“What? No, that’s not it,” Link said, and she forced herself to meet his eyes again. “It’s not that I don’t  _want_ to be, it’s that I feel that I’m not.”

“What is there to feel? You know your duty, so—”

“It’s not a duty to be with you,” he interrupted, and for all that he still called her ‘Princess’, she realized then that over the past year he had quite the habit of treating her casually, all propriety dropped. “That’s what I’m saying. I don’t feel like I’m fulfilling my—or  _a_ —duty by being with you. I feel like I’m just . . . being with you. Happily. Being happy with you.”

“Oh.” She flexed her fingers, and licked her lips. “Are you saying you weren’t happy being my knight?”

“No, not exactly.” Link shifted his weight to his other foot, and looked up at the temple ceiling again. “Sometimes it was hard, but the main thing is that I was always pretty aware of my duty back then. I was doing a job—my job. And now, I’m not so much, outside of the whole Hero thing.”

“You are quite preoccupied with ‘the Hero thing’,” Zelda said dryly, and he shot her a grin.

“Right, but not so much with the appointed knight thing.” Link took a deep breath and faced her properly again. Once more, the smile was gone from his lips, replaced with a determined expression. “What I’m trying to say, Princess, is that I don’t think I’m . . . I don’t want to be just your appointed knight anymore. I think we’re more than that now. I think we’re . . . friends?”

It took Zelda a moment to process what he had said, and when she did, she blinked. “Are you asking me?”

“Well, I don’t really know if it’s okay,” he said. “And also, I figure friends is a pretty careful and safe step to take for now, you know. The least likely to be a danger zone.”

“Danger zone? What do you mean by that?”

“You know . . .” Link waved one hand, gesturing vaguely. “Sometimes there are places where you know, if you go there, you’re going to get hurt. Or maybe you won’t get  _hurt_ , necessarily, but you know you shouldn’t go there, because it’s not time yet. Or maybe it can be time, if you decide it’s time, but it’s going be a lot harder if you make it time  _now_ versus if you just waited a little while longer until you were better prepared.”

“And you think that such a danger zone exists with me?” Zelda asked, and he nodded. She was aware, suddenly, of the thudding of her heart in her chest, and it felt so strong that she wondered if Link could hear its beating. Her skin felt flushed and warm. “What is it you’re trying to say? What do you believe this danger zone is?”

Link swallowed, and looked over to meet her eyes once more. His eyes were beautiful, a clear blue that reminded Zelda of open skies and carefree days riding horseback across the plains. He opened his mouth, but silence met her ears, and she saw his tongue toying along his teeth.

“Link?” she said softly.

Still, he said nothing. The silence ticked between them, each second broken only by the pounding of Zelda’s heart. And finally, in a voice so soft that she more read his lips than heard him speak, Link said, “You’re very special to me, Zelda.”

The breath was knocked from her lungs even before she threw herself forward, her arms locking around his neck in a hug just as tight, if not tighter, than he had given her that first night after Calamity Ganon’s sealing. His returned her hug immediately, automatically; he enfolded his arms around her, and his embrace felt so perfect, so  _natural_ , that she could hardly conceive of breaking it. So she didn’t; instead, she pulled back just enough so that she could look up at him, and—all duties, all responsibilities, all destinies and greater roles forgotten for that singular moment—she cupped her hand on the back of his head, and tugged his head down so his lips could meet hers. His hand found the small of her back, and he tugged her a bit closer as she wove her fingers through his hair, her mouth moving against his surprisingly soft, warm lips.

The Temple of Time had been silent for a century. Once a beautiful, spellbinding temple, it had fallen to the ages and demonic blight, and lay in partial ruins around them. But in that moment, as Link held her against him and she tugged herself closer, she thought she could hear ethereal singing echoing back at them, and perhaps the faintest of approving chimes from the sword still strapped to Link’s back.


End file.
